publishing in the electronic age
Mar. 13th, 2006 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eMost of my friends and family know I'm "chronically optimistic" (as my niece describes me). But I have to admit I still worry a lot about publishing in this new era. By publishing I don't just mean text, but also music, pictures, film, machinima, and program code.
In the past, people earned a living from the scarcity imposed by a natural bottleneck. Now, however, we are producing mountains of stuff which has no (or almost no) restriction. Not only that, but when anyone imposes an artificial restrictor on the flow of information people either avoid that source or find a way around it. For the first time in history it has become almost impossible to strangle data. There is so much information out there that any attempts to use a scarcity-based system simply results in turning people away from your data stream. As systems that limit information (either naturally or artificially) decline, what will the future of publishing be?
All around the world newspapers, commercial radio, book publishers, and TV networks are losing audience. I think this is a result of more than just the massive flood of free information though. I believe it has been hastened by the attitudes of people operating those declining industries, who often have terribly low opinions of the average person. They view their customers with disgust and dish out crap for general consumption. This is clearest in newspapers and commercial radio, which are coincidentally losing audience most quickly. They think the average person is only fit for trite propaganda, mindless sport, and sensationalist fear-mongering. They don't seem to have realised that the Australian public is one of the most literate in the world, up there near the northern European countries and Germany. (OK, this is changing a bit with the influence of USA on Australian culture -- sadly the USA has one of the lowest rates of public literacy in the western world.)
The weird thing is that we are losing our traditional media at the very same time that astonishing riches are available to them. They serve up crap when all around them are rich veins of gold.
There is a massive opportunity here for all of us. It is a pivotal time -- one of those times that gets examined again and again in history books for centuries to come. Can we find a way to use this abundance and throw away the old scarcity-based economy?
It is amazing that the scarcity-based model lasted so long. There has been no real reason for anyone to starve, or be uneducated or poor for the last several decades. There has been more than enough food and goods to go around. And now that the riches of knowledge can be multiplied and distributed effectively for free you would think our leaders would be embracing it. But this change won't be led by them. They have become followers. We are now the leaders. We will choose what kind of world our children live in.
In the past, people earned a living from the scarcity imposed by a natural bottleneck. Now, however, we are producing mountains of stuff which has no (or almost no) restriction. Not only that, but when anyone imposes an artificial restrictor on the flow of information people either avoid that source or find a way around it. For the first time in history it has become almost impossible to strangle data. There is so much information out there that any attempts to use a scarcity-based system simply results in turning people away from your data stream. As systems that limit information (either naturally or artificially) decline, what will the future of publishing be?
All around the world newspapers, commercial radio, book publishers, and TV networks are losing audience. I think this is a result of more than just the massive flood of free information though. I believe it has been hastened by the attitudes of people operating those declining industries, who often have terribly low opinions of the average person. They view their customers with disgust and dish out crap for general consumption. This is clearest in newspapers and commercial radio, which are coincidentally losing audience most quickly. They think the average person is only fit for trite propaganda, mindless sport, and sensationalist fear-mongering. They don't seem to have realised that the Australian public is one of the most literate in the world, up there near the northern European countries and Germany. (OK, this is changing a bit with the influence of USA on Australian culture -- sadly the USA has one of the lowest rates of public literacy in the western world.)
The weird thing is that we are losing our traditional media at the very same time that astonishing riches are available to them. They serve up crap when all around them are rich veins of gold.
There is a massive opportunity here for all of us. It is a pivotal time -- one of those times that gets examined again and again in history books for centuries to come. Can we find a way to use this abundance and throw away the old scarcity-based economy?
It is amazing that the scarcity-based model lasted so long. There has been no real reason for anyone to starve, or be uneducated or poor for the last several decades. There has been more than enough food and goods to go around. And now that the riches of knowledge can be multiplied and distributed effectively for free you would think our leaders would be embracing it. But this change won't be led by them. They have become followers. We are now the leaders. We will choose what kind of world our children live in.